Public robocalls documents don’t tell the full story of the case against Sona: expert

GLEN MCGREGOR AND STEPHEN MAHER, OTTAWA CITIZEN04.03.2013

Former Conservative staffer Michael Sona, left, is seen with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Sona was charged Tuesday under the Elections Act in connection with the misleading robocalls in Guelph riding during the 2011 federal election.

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OTTAWA — The prosecutors who decided to proceed with a charge against Conservative campaign worker Michael Sona in the robocall case must believe they have a shot at conviction, which suggests Elections Canada has evidence stronger than anything it has disclosed in publicly available court documents, says veteran elections lawyer Jack Siegel.

“The standard to get it through a prosecutor is reasonable prospect of obtaining a conviction,” said Siegel, an active Liberal, in an interview Wednesday. “Of course, all the evidence they have is not going to be on the public record.”

Sona, who was director of communications on the unsuccessful campaign of Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke, was charged Tuesday under the Elections Act for seeking to “prevent or endeavour to prevent an elector from voting at an election,” for actions alleged to have taken place between April 30 and May 2, 2011.

On April 30, someone established an account with voter-contact firm RackNine under a false name and activated the disposable “burner” cell phone that was used to send a fraudulent robocall to 7,000 opposition supporters on election day, May 2, directing them to the wrong polling station.

Sona has not spoken publicly since the charge was laid, but sent out a tweet Tuesday night suggesting that he is not “prepared to take the fall for this.”

Sona, who was fired by the party last February when news broke about the investigation into the Guelph robocall, did several media interviews last year in which he claimed he was being used as a scapegoat, and he tells his friends that he doesn’t have any information to share with investigators.

The Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News reported last month that Elections Canada had referred the result of their 22-month investigation into the fraudulent robocalls to the director of public prosecutions, who then gave investigators the OK to lay the charge.

Sona says he did not have access to the Conservatives’ CIMS database of voter information during the campaign, and court records filed by Elections Canada show that a CIMS list was used to send out the fraudulent robocall.

Five workers on the campaign did have access: Andrew Prescott, John White, Ken Morgan, Trente Blanchette and Chris Crawford.

White and Crawford have given evidence to investigators. Prescott, Morgan and Blanchette have refused to do so. Prescott now lives in Calgary. Morgan, the campaign manager, has moved to Kuwait.

In the last document filed by investigators — an Information to Obtain sworn on May 25, 2012 — investigator Allan Mathews pointed to Internet records that gave him reason to believe that someone — “probably Andrew Prescott” — interacted with the person responsible for the misleading calls, which put the media focus on Prescott and off Sona.

The charge against Sona alone suggests undisclosed evidence points in a different direction, says Siegel.

“They’ve got evidence that points to Sona that gives them more confidence that they can obtain a conviction against him than anyone else at this point,” Siegel said. “You charge who you think you can convict.”

Sona’s lawyer, Norm Boxall, issued a statement on Tuesday calling for a public inquiry into the robocall, and stating that Sona “clearly lacked the resources and access to the data required to make the robocalls.”

In an interview with Postmedia in February, Sona said he didn’t know who was behind the calls.

“I’ve spent the last year trying to figure out how this happened,” he said.

Sona also claimed that Mathews last year told his lawyer, “I don’t think for a second Mike Sona’s the guy responsible for doing this thing. It doesn’t make any sense.”

In a series of court documents filed last year, Mathews describes unproved allegations against Sona that were raised in interviews conducted with other Conservative campaign staff.

In a conversation the day after the robocalls story broke in February, Prescott told Mathews that he had sent an email to Sona and campaign manager Ken Morgan, in response to a request for contact information for RackNine, the Edmonton voice broadcaster used to place the election-day robocalls.

Another worker on the Guelph Conservative campaign, John White, told Mathews that Sona had approached him about making automated calls that could not be traced back to the campaign. White said Sona “was looking about doing some stuff that might not be okay” and wouldn’t take no for answer, so he referred him to Matthew McBain, an official in the Conservative Party’s campaign “war room” in Ottawa.

McBain told Mathews that Sona wanted to set up an auto-dial call that could not be track back to the campaign. He said he “warned Sona off any misconduct as the Party would not stand for it.”

White told Mathews he never spoke about the matter with Sona again, nor did he mention it to Morgan, the campaign manager. Mathews notes in his statement that White “did not refer to the matter again even when it became known on Election Day that misleading calls to electors were made.”

Sona since public claimed that the calls he was discussing were intended to attack Liberal candidate Frank Valeriote over his record on abortion and other issues — not to try to deceive voters.

Also in court documents, Mathews gives an account of his interview with Chris Crawford, who later took a job on Parliament Hill with Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Peter Penashue.

Crawford, once a close friend of Sona, told Mathews he had overheard Sona and Morgan talking in the campaign headquarters about “how the Americans do politics,” giving examples of “calling non-supporters late at night, pretending to be liberals, or calling electors to tell them their poll location had changed.” Mathews wrote.

Crawford claimed he didn’t think Sona was serious but says he told him the comments were inappropriate.

Sona later said that such conversations are common during a campaign but says he cannot recall speaking to Morgan about U.S. tactics. He strongly denied Crawford warned him about his remarks.

Sona’s lawyer is to appear in court on May 3, in Guelph, to face the charges. Sometime soon after that, prosecutors will have to present him with their evidence.

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Public robocalls documents don’t tell the full story of the case against Sona: expert

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